Archive for the ‘Rose is Rose’ Category

Earlier this week, my wife warned me not to look at real estate listings because they’d put me in a foul mood. Seeing as we bought our house a little over a year ago, I had no reason to browse the web looking for greener pastures. Of course, I ignored my wife’s warning and promptly went on Redfin.com to view listings. Naturally, the second house I looked at was immaculate, had newly refinished hardwood floors, sported what must have been miles of counter space, and featured an enormous backyard. It also sat within the boundaries of a highly regarded school district and was perched a half-mile from a train station, all for $10,000 more than the asking price of our current house. In other words, it was affordable. Now I’m in a foul mood. Now I’m going to stop looking at listings.

There was snow on my front steps this morning, all right, and while it hadn’t fallen in the shape of a snowman, there was enough of it to have concealed a real man. In fact, there was so much snow that I had to shovel it in layers: top, middle, and bottom. At least my office was closed, so I could afford to take my sweet time. And while the path I shoveled was skinnier than normal, I feel like I did a pretty good job. After all, I could have opened my windows, chucked a few carrots out into the snowdrifts, and called it a day.

Over the past few days, I’ve noticed one of the straps on my winter hat coming loose. It’s not the main strap that connects the ear flaps underneath my chin, but it still bugs me. It doesn’t bug me enough to get rid of the hat, but if I came across a potential replacement as awesome as the one in this strip I might use my frayed strap as an excuse to buy it. Of course, who would need an excuse to buy something that amazing? A pink and yellow gladiator hat that recalls new wave hairdos, the headgear in Lawrence of Arabia, and Dr. Seuss at his subversive best? I’d buy two.

“Light flurries with no accumulation?” I wish. Instead, I woke up this morning to find a fresh dusting of snow on the ground. “Oh well,” I thought as I went outside to shovel, “I’ll clear the walkway and that will be that.” But no sooner had I salted the sidewalks and trudged back into the house for a bowl of hot soup than the snow started falling again…hard. By the time I finished a few projects around the house, it looked like I had never shoveled at all. Now, as I sit here looking out the window at a beautiful winter scene, I can’t bear to disturb it. So I won’t, at least not until tomorrow.

Sometimes, when it’s raining, I sit by a window and stare out into the street, marveling at the majesty of it all. But when I stop to think about it, I realize that I’m not focusing on the sky. What I’m really watching is droplets hitting a puddle or rolling down a windowpane. That’s one of the reasons I’m interested in art that depicts rainstorms, because it’s pretty abstract. How do you draw a downpour? Some artists flood their canvas with dark lines while others show the effect of water reaching (and soaking) the solid ground. Today’s Rose is Rose takes a different approach, rendering rain as a series of teaspoons floating in mid-air. I must admit, I like the effect.

If the comics have taught me anything about cats, it’s that they’re picky eaters. If my own cats have taught me anything about cats, it’s that they’ll eat whatever I put in front of them. My current cat spent his formative years in the suburbs with my fiance, which meant he had ample opportunity to gorge himself on rabbits. After moving to the city, he developed a taste for dry cat food, so much so that his vet recommended switching to a special calorie control formula. The stuff smells like cardboard, but that doesn’t stop this fuzzball from whining whenever his dish is empty, or from attacking his morsels with relish when they finally hit the ground.

I grew up with a volatile calico named Tiger, who behaved much like the skittish cat in this strip. The convulsive snarling and scratching in the second-to-last panel? That was par for the course in my boyhood home. As much as I loved Tiger, she could be maddeningly unpredictable. She might spend a half-hour sitting on my lap before scratching and biting me at the unexpected turn of a page. She never did serious damage, though, and I contend that it was her ornery nature that helped her live 19 long years.